Gangster Yoda

A cute story to show how hit-and-miss ditzy my wife is when it comes to pop culture…

Allow me to set the scene:

We had a holiday party at the house a few weeks back. The traditional Hallelujah Chorus for 20 Kazoos was played (though I used a siren whistle also… whoopWhoooop WHOOOOOW). The traditional hors d’ouvres (A French word meaning “tiny foods too hard to make at home and too pricey to buy”) were well-stocked. And we eventually got around to playing Catchphrase, a word-guessing game not unlike $20,000 Pyramid (once hosted by ageless vampire Dick Clark, for those keeping score). In Catchphrase, two teams try to alternately guess as many words or phrases as they can, without being the team holding the “time bomb” buzzer when it goes off.

When Sue’s team got the name Yoda, her teammate started giving hints and descriptions, and fairly quickly Sue got the picture in her head of the famous Jim Henson-built puppet. Her visualization may have been helped by the fact that her geeky husband cut out a life-size Yoda head from the newspaper a number of years ago and pasted it to the wall above our computer, like a sensei or patron saint who speaks bad English. (“Use the F10 key, Luke. Help you it will.”)

But the pressure of the beeping game disk –plus her shouting teammates– made it impossible for her brain to recall the name of the famous Jim Henson-built green mentor/torturer. So what we heard from Sue sounded something like this:

“Oh. Ooh. Ooh. I know this one. It’s that guy. The green one, with the big ears. You know… the, the, the WISE GUY. Oh God, what – is – his – NAME?!!”

A few seconds later, when we stopped laughing, somebody else got it and we moved on to the next word. At the end of the round, though, I couldn’t resist teasing Sue:

“Honey, I must admit. I did not know that Master Yoda was actually a Mafioso as well. Wow.”

Now that I think about it, though, it’s an interesting idea: what would happen if I put Yoda’s words in Don Corleone’s mouth, like maybe in the opening scene of Godfather 1 when Brando’s petting that little kitten? Hmmm…

It may take awhile, but watch this space (and/or YouTube) for the premiere of The Yofather... or maybe The Forcefather? The Jedfather? (Or would that make folks think of Jed Clampett? –Ooh, I could put Jed’s voice in Darth Vader’s mouth, too. Yeah! The lightning bolts just keep comin’, my friends.)

Do you think National Endowment for the Humanities will give me a grant for this?